


Uncle Daryl

by EmmyGreene



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 19:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9339284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyGreene/pseuds/EmmyGreene
Summary: watching Maggie soothe her baby brings back too many memories for Daryl





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s a little something I wrote last night when I was overly emotional about everything else going on in my life and needed to get it all out through my favourite distraction- Daryl and Beth and the love story we never got to see :( Set slightly in the future and assuming they are all living in close quarters either at the Hilltop or Alexandria... Worth noting I was actually bawling my eyes out as I wrote this, I’ve never written another fic where Beth is dead, preferring to provide myself with alternate realities for them but this struck me as something that really could happen so here we are, a heartbreaking moment between Daryl and Maggie...

There was a lot he didn’t talk about, a lot that was left unsaid. He kept it to himself, brooded on his own. But some nights it was all too much for him.  
Maggie had been up all night walking the baby up and down the hall. From a distance he’d heard her voice trying to console the bundle in her arms but as she got closer he heard her singing   
‘“When I’m lying in my bed at night, I don’t wanna grow up. Nothing ever seems to turn out right. I don’t wanna grow up. How do you move in a world of fog that's always changing things? Makes me wish that I could be a dog. When I see the price that you pay, I don't wanna grow up. Nothing ever seems to go my way. I don't wanna grow up. The only thing to live for is today.”’  
He couldn’t take it anymore   
‘Please, don’t’ he said.  
Maggie looked up, it was the fact Daryl Dixon used his manners that really caught her attention  
‘just don’t’ he repeated.   
She sighed and bounced the baby but didn’t continue her song.  
‘She used to sing that song to ass-kicker’ he said.  
Maggie nodded through her tears and noticed she was not the only one crying.  
She walked over to Daryl and tried to hug him, despite the baby in the way.  
‘You holdin’ a baby.. .singin’ that song...’s too much’  
‘Sorry’ she whispered. She took a step back and he gestured for the baby.  
‘I wanna help out’ he said.  
‘You’re always helpin’ out’ Maggie replied  
‘With the baby. You don’t gotta do it alone, I wanna be there’  
The guilt he felt about the fact this baby was missing a grandfather, aunt and especially father had overwhelmed him since the birth.   
‘Like an Uncle?’ Maggie asked slowly  
He nodded and tried to speak but his voice caught. He cleared his throat and started again.  
‘I’d have liked that, if things had gone different. To be an Uncle’  
‘like if Merle...’ Maggie’s voice trailed off as Daryl interrupted he  
‘She’d have been that Aunt and I’d...’ fresh tears ran down his cheeks but Maggie caught on.  
He’d have been with Beth, been the Uncle by default.  
‘Oh’ and she wrapped her arms around him and the baby and the three of them sat there crying.


End file.
